But orders were orders, and Agnieshka wouldn’t have allowed me to disobey them.
I sent our drones, at least those that had survived, back out to watch for any more trouble, told my human teammates to go back to sleep, and went back on guard duty. Before my shift was over, ammunition trucks came right up to the front lines and we could replenish, for which I was grateful.
In another minute of firing, we would all have been out, and being out of ammunition is being dead when artillery is coming in.
Reloading went quickly, since all of our tanks had at least one manipulator arm, and I was able to turn the squad over to Quincy in good condition. We even had a full compliment of drones.
My shift over, I felt like some more socializing, and asked Agnieshka to call Zuzanna to see if we could come over. I shortly found myself on the usual forest path, but with a few major changes.
I was suddenly wearing a gaudy velvet medieval outfit, with tights, boots, and a cape! I was wearing a sword and a dagger, and I was on a big horse that was decked out in barding that matched my outfit.
Agnieshka was also in costume, with a low cut, green velvet dress that matched her eyes. She was riding to my right on a sidesaddle.
I knew enough about history to know that this stuff wasn’t exactly authentic. Like, my tunic was fastened shut with a zipper! It was all similar to what you’d see in a 1950s Hollywood movie.
Before I could ask what it was all about, we were met by a very attractive young woman on a sidesaddle who was wearing garb similar to Agnieshka’s, but sky blue and even more richly embroidered.
She had clear blue eyes, very long blond hair, and an enchanting smile.
“Good morning, my lord and lady! Thou wouldst know the way to Camelot?”
I couldn’t figure out if she was asking or offering to tell us. I thought for a moment about trying to answer her forsoothly, but decided not to since I’d likely make a hash of it.
“Good morning. I take it that you are Zuzanna,” I said.
“Indeed, my lord, thou art uncommon well informed. ‘Tis a lovely day for a ride in the wildwood! Shall we be off?”
I decided what the hell and fell in with her game. Soon we were racing through the woods, going much too fast for conversation. Zuzanna’s horse was even faster than ours, and soon she was a hundred meters ahead of us. Suddenly, a knight in black-and-gold plate armor charged out from some bushes at the side of the trail. He caught up with Zuzanna and pulled her from her saddle.
“Help! Save me, Lord Mickolai!” she shouted, kicking and hitting the knight’s armor with her fists.
I didn’t know what this nonsense was about, but I don’t like seeing a woman abused. I rode to the side of the knight and the still struggling Zuzanna.
“Look, buster! I don’t know what your game is, but I don’t like it! Let her go!” I said.
“Varlet!” He shouted. He let her slip to the ground and drew his sword. “Ride on or die!”
Then, without waiting to see which of the above I would select, he swung his sword at me!
I was startled, but had wits enough to draw my own sword and block his in time. I didn’t know the first thing about sword fighting, but it soon became obvious that he didn’t either.
We hacked and bashed for a while, but what with his armor, there wasn’t much that I could do to him. Then I noticed the eyeslit in his helmet, and the first chance I got, I stuck my sword in there.
He gushed about six liters of blood and gore, like something from an ancient Monty Python movie, and then fell over dead at my horse’s feet.
Before I could get my sword back into its sheath, Zuzanna had put her foot on top of my stirrup and had pulled herself close to my side.
“Most noble lord! The knight thou hast valiantly slain was the evil warlock Sir Mordick! Thou hast saved my honor and my very soul from the most dire of fates! Take me, my lord! My love and my body are yours forever!”
“Uh, right,” I said. “Look, you’re very attractive and all that, but my girlfriend and your husband would both object to what you have in mind.”
“That is no way to treat a lady, my lord!”
“That’s exactly the way one should treat a married lady. Zuzanna, what’s all this nonsense about?”
She took a breath and looked at me, disappointed. Then she said, “My lord, if we must live in a Dream World, it is only fitting and proper that we should dream up a world that is worth living in. Why settle for a mundane existence, when all the possibilities of adventure and fantasy lie available and waiting for us?”
“Lady, I just got all the adventure I wanted during that last artillery barrage. I’m afraid that killing an inept knight didn’t do much for me.”
“As thou wilt, my lord. Wouldst thou repair to my castle and refresh thineself? And thine lady too, of course.”
“We’d be delighted,” I said.
Around the next bend in the trail, we came to a castle that was probably patterned on something that Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria had come up with. Or maybe it was from Disneyland.
The drawbridge came down for us and three handsome young boys in page outfits marched out to take care of our horses.
More pretty boys escorted us to a dining chamber that was a lot like the nave of a Gothic church, except that the polychromed statues and the stained glass windows were all on secular, sexual, and even pornographic subjects rather than religious ones.
Zuzanna looked around the room, gestured in a magical sort of way, and the room shrank until it was of a proper size for three people to dine in.
“I am a mighty sorceress, of course, but then so is anyone else who wants to be in my world,” she said. “Wouldst thou be a warlock, my lord?”
I was saved from answering by a dozen more adolescent boys who brought in a lavish meal on as many platters.
The food looked tempting, except for the boar’s head, where the roasted lips had pulled back, leaving the ghastly teeth pointing skyward. The thick liquid that dribbled from the mostly empty eye sockets added considerably to the general effect. I didn’t feel right about the two dishes where the birds still had their feathers on, either.
“So you prefer to live in a medieval fantasy world,” I said.
“Why not? It’s my world and I can do with it as I please, except when I have to go out and fight the Serbians.”
“I suppose so. I gather that you have a thing about young boys.”
“Doesn’t every old woman? At least here, I can’t go to jail for it. In all events, a person’s private world is her own private business.”
I passed on that one, but soon I was able to get the conversation on my own level.
I found that Zuzanna had been a college professor on Earth, teaching history. She was perfectly aware of the anachronisms about her, but she preferred to live not as things actually had been, but rather as she felt that they should have been.
“I can get along quite nicely without the Black Death, the Thirty Years War, and the Spanish Inquisition, thank you. Modern bathrooms, electric lights, and a regular supply of fresh meats and vegetables greatly improve the quality of life. But somewhere in the course of building the modern world, much that was of great value was somehow left behind, to our great loss both as separate humans and as a culture. We have lost our roots, our extended families, and our childhood friends. Without these things, our lives have lost much of their meaning. Constantly traveling around the world, we became atomized individuals, flecks of dust blowing in the winds of time, molecules of a thin gas when we yearned to be part of a solid whole. Our feelings of impermanence have become so strong that some of our sadder cases have taken to tattooing, piercing, and actually branding their bodies, painfully putting permanent marks on their skins, just to have something about themselves that will last a while.”
“Yes,” I said, “I sometimes feel that way myself. But what does that have to do with the castles and the horses and the embroidered velvet clothes?”
“Our loss of connectedness with the living world about us naturally resulted in a corresponding loss of appreciation for art and beauty. Our buildings and clothes became simplified, standardized, and ugly. Make a factory to make a billion identical shirts for a billion identical people! Never mind if none of them suits anyone’s taste, or fits anyone exactly. If people are too tall or too short or too fat or too skinny, why, it must be their fault! They must be evil! Let them go on a diet, or get some kind of medical help, or just go away!